Career Decisions: Self Assessment

The most common question I'm asked is this one: "I don't know what I want to do. Is there a test or something that can tell me what career is right for me?" The answer is no. You can't take a test that will, as if by magic, tell you what to do with the rest of your life. You can however use a combination of self assessment tools that will aid you in your decision. This article will demystify the self assessment phase of the career planning process. First I will tell you what self assessment is and then I will give you an overview of the various tools used to help you learn about yourself.
Self assessment is the first step of the career planning process. During a self assessment you gather information about yourself in order to make an informed career decision. A self assessment should include a look at the following: values, interests, personality, and skills.

• Values: the things that are important to you, like achievement, status, and autonomy
• Interests: what you enjoy doing, i.e. playing golf, taking long walks, hanging out with friends
• Personality: a person's individual traits, motivational drives, needs, and attitudes
• Skills: the activities you are good at, such as writing, computer programming, teaching

Many people choose to hire a career counselor who will administer a variety of self assessment inventories. What follows is a discussion of the different types of tools you may encounter, as well as some other things to consider when pursuing a career change.

Value Inventories

Your values are possibly the most important thing to consider when you're choosing an occupation. If you don't take your values into account when planning your career, there's a good chance you'll dislike your work and therefore not succeed in it. For example, someone who needs to have autonomy in his work would not be happy in a job where every action is decided by someone else. There are two types of values: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic values are related to the work itself and what it contributes to society. Extrinsic values include external features, such as physical setting and earning potential. Value inventories will ask you to answer questions like the following:

• Is a high salary important to you?
• Is it important for your work to involve interacting with people?
• Is it important for your work to make a contribution to society?
• Is having a prestigious job important for you?

During a self assessment, a career counselor may administer one of the following value inventories: Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ), Survey of Interpersonal Values (SIV), or Temperament and Values Inventory (TVI). If you want to get a feel for what you'll be asked, take a look at the Work-Related Values Assessment, which is a printable list of work related values, with a definition of each one.

Source: http://careerplanning.about.com

Read more »

Career Decision Making Guide

Career decision making is a dynamic and ongoing process where your knowledge of self, your values, interests, temperament, financial needs, physical work requirements or limitations, etc., the effects of past experiences, new information, and changes in your life situation and environment all intertwine.
It requires constant review of decisions already made and consideration of decisions yet to be made.
Good career decision making requires you to engage in a process that requires you to:

1. examine and recognize personal values
2. identify, gather, and use relevant information.
3. understand and use an effective strategy for converting information into action.

Each career decision is limited by what you are capable of now or in the future, by your ability to identify alternatives, and by what you are willing to do.
Skillful career decision making requires you to be focused, flexible and open to new learning.
The following guidelines and questions to keep in mind to help you with decision making.
1. Define the problem. State the real problem, not the surface problem. State the problem in specific terms, as a question.
2. State the goal clearly. What outcome do you want from this decision?
3. List the initial alternative solutions. Which are the safe ones? Which require risk? What are the outcomes of each solution?
4. Collect information and expand the list of alternatives. What kind of information do need? Where can you obtain it? Is it relevant to the problem? list additional solutions or options.
5. Compare several alternatives with what you know about yourself, your values, your commitments to others, your resources, and your constraints.
6. Take action on your choice. How can you implement your choice? What action can you take now? What action can you take later?
7. Review your choice periodically.
8. Take a new decision based on new situations. 

SUMMARY OF CAREER DECISION MAKING STEPS

• Define the problem
• State the goal clearly
• List the initial alternative solutions
• Collect information and expand the list of alternatives
• Compare several alternatives
• Choose one alternative
• Take action on your choice
• Review
• Make a new decision

Probably the most beneficial outcome of learning effective career decision making skills is that it gives you a feeling of control over what you can do.
Careful planning decision making will help you make informed, responsible, and wise choices that will lead to greater career satisfaction.

SUMMARY OF A GOOD CAREER DECISION MAKER

1. EXAMINES PERSONAL VALUES
2. GATHERS AND USES INFORMATION
3. CONVERTS INFORMATION INTO ACTION

Once you have made a career decision and a choice of an occupation, then develop an Action Plan. 

An action plan begins with the identification of short-term and long-term goals. Before you set short-term and long-term career goals, you should have taken informal or formal assessments. 

Using the results from these assessments, as well as labor market information, identify careers that will match your abilities, interests, values, personality, development stage, financial needs, transportation and family needs.

An effective career decision plan broadens your horizons and make the achievement of your dreams far more likely. An effective career plan requires you to set both long-term and short-term goals and they are equally important.

Long-term goals give you a more clear idea of the things to accomplish in the long run as they are usually big and central to your life. The steps taken to reach long-term goals are short-term goals. 

Short term goals are achievable within a relatively short period of time (six months to a year). Short-term goals may also be accomplished daily or attained within a month. 

For example, your short term goal may be taking a minimum wage job while simultaneously pursuing post secondary education in preparation for a career, or your short-term goal might be taking several part-time jobs until you find a stable full-time job. 

A long term goal takes much more time to reach. For example, if your long-term goal is to become a doctor, then you need to set aside eight years out of your life to pursue a medical career.

Read more »

Making The Best Possible Career Move

By Caroline McAuliffe, ExeConnect and Virtual Angels

According to research conducted in the U.S., the average baby boomer will switch jobs 10 times throughout their careers. Regardless of economic conditions, we all need to take greater control of our own careers. The concept of a traditional move up the corporate ladder is no longer guaranteed as it once was nor an obvious final destination to plan towards. Your career plan needs to be continuously evolving.

Job moves are almost always inevitable, they are seldom easy and nearly always emotionally fraught—and too often they lead to a noticeable decline in performance, in both the short and the long term.
There are five common job-change themes that are worth thinking about before making our move. These are often cited by search consultants as well as HR Managers as being re-occurring issues for people. Prior to making the move ask yourself these questions:

1. Have I done enough research?
2. Am I leaving for the money?
3. Am I going “to” rather than “from?”;
4. Am I overestimating myself?;
5. 5. Am I thinking too short term?

They can follow predictable patterns and persist throughout the course of a career. These issues are not necessarily independent of one another and they can play out as a system of behaviors, dissatisfaction, unrealistic hopes, ill-considered moves, and more dissatisfaction.

 

Have you done enough research?

Job hunters need to do their research in four important areas: The reality of opportunities in your industry or function. Do you have unrealistic expectations of what’s out there? Secondly, have you done your homework on your potential employer’s financial stability and market position? Don’t just assume that your new employer is on solid ground, check their balance sheet, it’s up to you to assess whether you will have a job in six months. Ensure there is a cultural fit with your potential employer – everyone will suffer if there is a poor fit. Make sure that the title and description of the role you are being offered is a true reflection of the actual role responsibilities. You may find yourself in a job, after you have started, that bears little relationship to the title, which can lead to loss of credibility if the job is beyond you or massive disappointment if your skills and experience are beyond the job.

Are you leaving just for money?

It’s easy to be lured away for an attractive financial offer. It’s interesting how, when asked, we rank money as about fourth on our list of reasons to change job, but when it comes down to it, it becomes number one when making a final decision.
Consider what relationships, networks and connections you may be leaving behind for the sake of a few more dollars, right now.
Have you done all the necessary research as cited above before just making the decision to move for more money; is it really the right move?

Are you moving “to” the right Job or moving away “from” the wrong job?

If you have got to the point where you are really unhappy in your current job and just want to get out, you may make hasty decisions which may lead to another career mistake. This is the time to pause and plan your next career move. Don’t rush through the job hunt – follow the career planning steps and wait for the right offer. Don’t skimp on research. Be strategic in your thinking, not emotional. Have you, for example, discounted your current employer or are there perhaps other opportunities to explore with them?

Are you overestimating yourself?

Be reflective about what you actually have contributed to your organisation. Do you have unrealistic views of your skills and experience? Can you identify the sources of your successes and failures in your existing job? We need to be self-critical and identify what part of our current unhappiness is due to external factors and the environment we find our self in and what has to do with our own personal frustrations and issues? If we don’t think this issue through, we run the risk of finding ourselves unhappy and dissatisfied again, for the same reasons, in a new role. Be honest with yourself – is your unhappiness and disappointment everything to do with the current employer or job, or is there underlying personal issues that need to be addressed before planning your next move? Do you need to think about skills training or experience gaps? Do you need to be think about working in a different industry or in a different function? Is it time to go back and explore what it is you are passionate about and then plan ways to fulfil that potentially along a new career path?

Are you thinking too short term?

Having a short-term perspective can feed into each of the other four issues. For instance, if you overestimate yourself, you may believe you deserve rewards right now, not in five years. Leaving a firm because of money and going “from” rather than “to” are both overly influenced by immediate information and considerations. “How much money can I make right now?”, “How can I escape an unpleasant work environment?”. Try and plan for the longer term. Ask yourself if this next job move is leading you along the longer term path you envisage. It’s important to try and plan longer term whilst remaining curious to all possibilities along the way. Having a plan but at the same time remaining open minded about other possibilities.

In summary, it’s important to try and plan ahead, but keep your plan alive and evolving. Try not to be pressured into making hasty decisions. As you go through the job change process ask yourself: “What if I’m wrong? What is the evidence that this new company would be a good fit?” Develop alternative options. Have you considered all the opportunities that might be available for you with your current employer? Speak to a mentor, or trusted advisor within your network who can provide you with a reality check.

Read more »

How to Become a Professional Blogger - Career Blogger

Become a Professional Blogger

Blogging is the one of the best and safest online businesses and work at home jobs. It is very easy to become a blogger. It is free and the only thing you invest is your time. You make money, learn more, find new friends and introduce your abilities to the world just by spending your time.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. • 1
     Are you a writer? Are you able to write articles about what you know or what you love? If yes you are already qualified for blogging. To become a blogger, you just need to be able to write. You can even read what the others have written about the same topic and then write your own articles using your own words and sentences.
     If you are not a writer, you can create and improve this ability in yourself. It is very easy. Just start writing about anything that you like and anything that happens to you daily. Then you will find out that it is not that hard and you can write too.
   • 2
     Choose a niche or topic. You need to choose something to blog about. For example if you are a good cook, you can blog about cooking. If you are a photographer, you can write about photography and share the photos you take in your blog. It is recommended to choose a special topic because blogs that have no special subject to focus on can not attract people.
   • 3
     Register a domain for your blog or sign up for a free blog at http://www.blogger.com
     If you prefer to register your own domain name for your blog, the platform that I recommend is the WordPress. This is the software that you have to download and install on your website to make a blog. It is free: http://wordpress.org/
   • 4
     Your blog is read? So it is time to write and post article to it. Start writing and posting.
   • 5
     Keep your blog updated. Try to post new articles at least a few time per week.
   • 6
     Monetize your blog. The best tool for the blog monetization is the Google Adsense. Google Adsense displays ads on your blog that will make money for you when people click on them. It is also free to sign up for the Google Adsense: http://www.google.com/adsense/
   • 7
     Make it easy to subscribe for your blog RSS feed. RSS feed is the tool that has made the blogs different from ordinary sites. RSS let everybody who has subscribed know that your blog is updated.
   • 8
     Don't give up. Blogging is like any other businesses. It can be hard at the beginning and it doesn't make any money or makes very small amount of money at the first months but if you don't give up and keep on working, it will become your full time job.
   • 9
     Read and check other related blogs on a regular basis. For example the http://careerbuildertools.blogspot.com is my blog which is about working from home and internet marketing. You can see how I have created and promoted it. Please ask me if you have any question.

Read more »

What Career Are You Growing In Your "Life Garden"?

Today we celebrate “Prepare Your Life Garden Day”—a time to identify what we need to be doing right now to prepare our “career garden” and how we can make wiser choices when it comes to deciding what “seeds” to plant. 

And our guest expert to help us is Laurence Shatkin, PhD, author of Overnight Career Choice and a Senior Product Developer at JIST Publishing with 30 years of experience in the career information field.

Dr. Shatkin is an award-winning career information systems developer, a member of the National Career Development Association and a frequent presenter at their conferences, and is the author of the Career Laboratory blog.

“Change Coach” Nancy: What are some indications that you are in the wrong career?

Dr. Shatkin: The most obvious indication is if you dread Monday morning. Or perhaps you find yourself doing many things to avoid work, such as Facebook or water-cooler conversations. If you invent distractions that you don’t actually enjoy, such as tidying up your office, it’s a signal that you enjoy the work tasks even less. Of course, it’s possible that you enjoy the career, but it’s not paying enough or you expect to have trouble staying (or becoming) employed. That happened to me.

“Change Coach” Nancy: What are the key questions to ask yourself if you are considering making a career change?

Dr. Shatkin: First of all, why should this new career work out better than the old one? Specifically, what makes this career a better match for my skills and interests or more economically viable?

Do I have what it takes to succeed in the new career I’m considering? Specifically, do I have the appropriate educational or training credentials? 

If formal credentials are not needed, can I make the case (in a resume and interviews) that I have the skills that will be needed? 

What specific accomplishments can I point to (perhaps in a portfolio) that will convince employers that I will earn my salary?

“Change Coach” Nancy: Can you give some quick tips on how to assess your key skills and interests?

Dr. Shatkin: The fastest way to assess your skills is to divide a page into three columns and, in the leftmost column, list the jobs or work-related projects you’ve done. 

In the middle column, identify the tasks that were most important for success in these efforts. In the rightmost column, extract the skills that were needed for those tasks.

To identify your interests, think about activities you do that might tempt you to come to dinner a few minutes late. You may need to exercise some creativity to find ways to relate your interests to work situations.

“Change Coach” Nancy: Your book includes the nine most important components of an ideal job. What are they?

Dr. Shatkin: They are :

1. Skills and abilities
2. Interests
3. Personal values
4. Preferred earnings
5. Level of responsibility
6. Location
7. Special knowledge
8. Work environment
9. Types of people you like to work with and for

“Change Coach” Nancy: Your book discusses the connection between work values and motivators and career choice. Why is it important to understand that concept and factor it into a job decision?

Dr. Shatkin: Not every day on the job is payday. Work needs to have satisfactions that make you feel, at day’s end, “That was a good day at work.” We all have different ways of gauging this. For some of us, it’s the physical results of the work, such as a completed brick wall or a Web page design. For others, it’s the intangible results, such as a satisfied customer or an enlightened student.

Most people can name only one or two things they want from work besides money, but they will recognize the importance of other motivators once you suggest them. They may seek leadership, variety, independence, teamwork, creativity, flexible work hours, or many other aspects of work.

“Change Coach” Nancy: With unemployment so high and jobs in short supply, what advice do you have for job-seekers who are losing hope of ever finding the job that’s right for them?

Dr. Shatkin: In these hard times, you may not be able to work in the job that’s right for you. However, you can take steps to upgrade your skills for when the job market will be better. If you’re working now in a job that’s not a good fit, you may be able to concentrate on the few parts of the job that give you the greatest satisfaction and improve your ability to handle these aspects. It may also be possible to take on small tasks in another function where you see future career possibilities, such as management, sales, or training other workers.

If you’re not working, or in your leisure time, you may be able to do these tasks in a volunteer position. Either way, you will build your skills, test your satisfactions, and chalk up accomplishments, all of which can help you in your later career pursuits.

Many people who lose hope simply have not been using the right techniques for finding jobs. It’s more true than ever that most job openings are never advertised and are learned about through personal connections. You need to build a network of contacts and make cold calls about jobs.

Thanks, Dr. Shatkin, for your great career advice! As you pointed out, if we want a bountiful harvest (i.e., a career that brings us satisfaction), then we need to do the work that will help grow it!

Read more »